Space Cadet by bobismijnnaam

SPACE CADET
A game by bobismijnnaam for Ludum Dare 42, about a protagonist losing himself in the genre of idle games, spiraling out of control in no time. Experience the true in-game bliss of an in-game idle-game powered by your space bar. But watch out! It would be a shame if your spacebar broke ;-)

Controls
Mouse to look around, wasd to walk around, F to interact. Don't forget the front door!
The game contains sounds but some might be a bit harsh. Don't leave your speakers on 100%!

Files
The zip contains linux, windows, macos, and webgl builds. Pick the one you need! Macosx build is untested.
Tools
Unity (FPS Character, postprocessing)
Gimp
Bfxr
Audacity
About the author
bobismijnnaam on ludum dare
http://plusminos.nl
bobrubbens [at] gmail [dot] com
@bobismijnfaam
Ratings
| Overall | 568th | 3⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 672th | 2.458⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 493th | 2.935⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 545th | 3.146⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 466th | 2.978⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 478th | 2.524⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 268th | 2.636⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 495th | 2.636⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
Motion Blur felt kind of pointless to me, though.
The idea is that you play an idle game a la cookie clicker but with your space bar. You collect "spaces" by pressing the spacebar in-game. However, sometimes the spacebar breaks, and you have to look around in the house for a new spacebar (these are actually the sticks you are referring to ;)). Some spacebars are left around the house, but if you run out you can always ask the strange floaty for more. As the game develops you can buy the end-game item which sets in motion the final stage with an interesting cutscene.
Hope this explains the game a bit better for you. If you have any comments after giving it another shot I'd be very happy to hear them :)
I confess that it took me a while to realise that I had to use the Enter key to buy things from the shop, and that Space accumulated currency. To be honest, I clicked on this because of Space Cadet... You know, the pinball game from the old versions of Windows? Man, I wasted so many hours on that back in the day...
Anyhow, this was interesting, but I find myself a little... puzzled by the whole thing. Not entirely sure what to think, really. You've certainly made something unusual, so you get good points for innovation, I guess... :) Oh, and you also definitely get points for the way the game fits the theme. Running out of _Space_... Bloody ingenious.
Initially tried the webGL build on Firefox, and it seemed to perform awfully. Switching to Chromium, because FF tends to be arse when it comes to webGL games, made it work pretty much identically, but would not play sounds for no reason. Ultimately, I played it with the desktop build, which... well, I guess it worked fine, and I guess the slightly laggy controls, the terribly prominent motion blur (I hate that particular effect in general, but that's personal bias), and the general sense of things being... off... were done so by design. Nice!
@Yetman I didn't spend too much time on tuning post processing but I'll be sure to tune it better next time, thanks :)
I'm not really sure if I got to the end of the game or not? I never got the one door to open. I think I bought everything I could in the game. I may have had another spacebar delivery I could've bought, but it was at like 40000. Everything else was greyed out even when I had enough money for it. I fed the Buddha 4 spacebars and it took me back to the main menu. It didn't seem to be any different if I gave him the spacebars on day 2 or day 10.
I didn't mind the clicker game at first, but now I've played it a million times trying to see if I could open the last door to no avail so now it's a little less exciting.
I like the mood this game sets. You can just tell how much of this guy's life is absorbed by the clicker game. All he has in his house is the clicker game and some spacebars. He has even taken off all the other keys on his keyboard. He has a note on the wall reminding himself of how much he loves spacebars as if he had to remind himself to get more spacebars. The game itself also seems to be more than a game. It has upgrades that you can purchase in game so that your space bar lasts longer. It's a game that somehow also interacts with the real world. Plus you have the otherworldly nature of the Space Buddha you can order that will murder you if you give it 4 spacebars and the Strange Floaty that gives you more spacebars.